Mickadeit: Goodwin prosecutors respond

Mike Goodwin, center, and two unidentified visitors in prison in a photo taken in 2011. COURTESY JOHN BRADLEY

I'm reading “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens, whose cynical message about his era's dysfunctional judicial system is characterized by a lawsuit that carries on for generations, doing nothing more than employing barristers, churning out reams of paperwork and keeping the lives of numerous innocent parties in limbo.

So on Monday, when I hefted the attorney general's 291-page response to the defendant's 472-page appeal in the People of the State of California v. Michael Frank Goodwin, I imagined I was in 19th-century England reading pleadings from Dickens' iconic Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.

As a practical matter, People v. Goodwin is 25 years old this year, having its genesis in the 1988 slayings of race car driver Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy. They were gunned down in their driveway in Los Angeles County by two men who have never been identified. Goodwin, an O.C. resident and Mickey's former business partner, was immediately suspected of hiring the killers, but it wasn't until 2001 that he was charged.

Goodwin was convicted of murder in 2008 and got a life sentence. His appeal was not filed until last year. The delay is due to a variety of Dickensian reasons I don't have room to detail. So when I last wrote about the case, in December, I focused on just four of the defense's 27 grounds for appeal. Today, we'll look at the A.G.'s responses to the two that have O.C. roots; Wednesday, we'll look at two grounded in L.A. County law enforcement activities.

Issue One: Undue Influence? Goodwin's appellate lawyer, Gail Harper, alleges that the L.A. D.A.'s office did not file charges for 16 years because it had no case. She contends that Mickey's sister, former San Juan Capistrano Mayor Collene Campbell, improperly influenced a new L.A. Sheriff's detective, Mark Lillienfeld, to seek prosecution in O.C.

Campbell's influence, Harper claims, extended to O.C. District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, with whom Campbell had worked on victims-rights issues. It was T-Rack who first charged Goodwin, in 2001. An appellate court said O.C. didn't have jurisdiction and threw out the charges. Then, L.A. County's new D.A., Steve Cooley, decided to pick them up and file in his county's court. Harper contends that but for the improper influence of Campbell in O.C., Goodwin would never have been charged and convicted in L.A.

A.G.'s Response. As to the detective, the A.G. says, once a crime occurred in a jurisdiction covered by his agency, he was authorized to pursue the case anywhere in the state.

Regarding Rackauckas, the A.G. says Harper's allegations of an improper relationship or undue influence between Campbell and the D.A. were not supported by anything Harper submitted to the appellate court. Moreover, the A.G. indicated, even if the allegations were true, Goodwin wasn't harmed by any undue influence on Rackauckas because he ultimately was not tried in O.C.

Issue Two: Illegal Raid? Harper also has challenged the search of Goodwin's O.C. home office and the seizure of documents containing communications between Goodwin and his lawyers. Goodwin had put a sign on the door saying that privileged materials were inside, but the documents were seized anyway and ultimately read by Alan Jackson, one of the L.A. prosecutors. Jackson should have been removed from the case, Harper says, and the fact that the trial judge failed to do so is a reversible error.

A.G.'s Response. The A.G. attacks this contention on several fronts. For one thing, the A.G. says, Harper doesn't identify any particular document that the defense believes resulted in prejudicing the case against Goodwin. She didn't cite information the prosecutors used that aided them or hurt the defense.

Also, even if the documents were improperly seized, it wasn't the L.A. D.A.'s office that was responsible for it but rather the O.C. D.A.'s office, which was working the case at the time and had rebuffed Goodwin's attempt to protect the materials, and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which carried out the search.

“For purposes of establishing outrageous governmental misconduct, there is no authority for attributing misconduct by law enforcement officers to unwitting prosecutors,” the A.G. wrote.

Tomorrow: L.A.-based grounds.

Mickadeit writes Monday-Friday. Contact him at 714-796-4994 or fmickadeit@ocregister.com.

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